“When a man is close to the greatest event of his life,” the earl said, “he has more need of his solicitor than hisrest, Jule. Tomorrow. In the morning?”
“Prudholm is your solicitor?” the viscount asked. “I shall see that he is here, sir, bright and early. Now if you will excuse me, I would like to wash and change and pay my respects to my aunt. 1 shall look in on you tomorrow if youare strong enough.”
“If I am alive, you mean,” the earl said, chuckling. “You may be an earl by tomorrow, Daniel. You will like that wellenough, I daresay, eh?”
Julia was glaring at him again, the viscount saw before he turned to leave the room. Doubtless she thought he hadcome merely to gloat over the imminence of a new andgrander tide. Doubtless she was terrified that the summoning of the solicitor was a sign that the old man was going to change his will. Was she so confident that it was in her favor now?
“I shall see you at dinner, Julia,” he said with exaggerated courtesy. “What time is it served?”
“Six o’clock,” she said.“We keep country hours here.”
He bowed and left the room.
The Earl of Beaconswood spent almost an hour alone the next morning with his solicitor, keeping his doctor waitingdownstairs for all of half an hour. The doctor was with himonly ten minutes before reporting to Julia and to the Viscount Yorke that his lordship was comfortable and free ofpain provided he was given his medication regularly, butthat he was weakening.
It was the same report as he had given daily for the past month.
The earl was civil to his nephew when the latter called upon him for ten minutes after luncheon. He barked at hissister and made her cry when she bumped against his bedwhile shaking pillows that he had protested did not needshaking. And he lay awake for an hour listening to Juliaread the opening ofA Pilgrim’s Progress.It was a damnedsight more entertaining than that Gulliver drivel, he gave ashis opinion, though Julia had the impression that he had notbeen listening at all. He stared at her broodingly and shewaited for him to start talking about Sir Albert Dicksonagain. But he did not do so.
The earl ate a little dinner when Julia coaxed him with some of his favorite delicacies, and he bade a civil goodnight to her and to the viscount and his sister. He evenadded that Millie had a good heart after growling at heragain when it looked as if she was approaching his pillows.He took his medicine obediently before Julia left.
But he did his dying alone as he had wished to do, without either noise or fuss. His valet, who had dozed the night away in his master’s dressing room, the door wide open sothat he would hear the slightest noise, found his masterdead in the morning when he tiptoed into the room to checkon him in the early dawn light.
It looked for all the world, the valet explained to everyone belowstairs later in the morning, as if the old earl wasmerely sleeping peacefully. Everyone else agreed, evenAunt Millie, who had to be carried away by a stout footmanwhen she had the vapors although she had insisted on viewing the body, and Julia, who wept soundlessly until LordYorke quietly directed the housekeeper to take her back toher room and call her maid to stay with her there.
It was the viscount—or rather the new Earl of Beaconswood—who, after consulting his uncle’s solicitor, wrote to all his relatives to summon them to Primrose Parkfor the funeral if at all possible, but certainly for the readingof the will. It was the new earl who set in motion arrangements for the funeral.
Julia was left alone to grieve.
2
The older generation always came faithfully to Primrose Park during the summer. Rarely did any of them miss. The younger generation had all come too while theywere still children. The summers had always been wild,delirious times for Julia. She had played her heart out andwondered how she had lived for ten months without themand without any significant companionship except that ofher grandfather and Aunt Millie. And yet when summerended and they all went back home again, she had alwaysreturned cheerfully and even gratefully to the quiet life ofPrimrose Park and the warm and active one of her imagination.
The cousins had not come so often since they had started to grow up, especially the male cousins. There were otherthings to entice them away, like Brighton or one of theother spas, or parties at the homes of school or universityfriends. And Susan had married two years before and nowhad obligations to her husband’s family as well as her own.
But they all came at the news of the death—just as the old earl had predicted they would. Not one of them stayedaway, except Susan’s husband. Most of them arrived intime for the funeral, but they were all there for the readingof the will, ten days after the death of the old Earl of Beaconswood. The new earl summoned them and they came,shocked and grieving and rather angry at the fact that theyhad not been warned or given the chance to come sooner.
Aunt Sarah, the Viscountess Yorke, Daniel’s mother, was the first to arrive with her daughter, Camilla. AuntSarah was clearly annoyed.
“The old fool,” she said ofherdeceased brother-in-law in Julia’s hearing, though she was talking to her son. “Hecould not have informed his closest family that he was ill, Isuppose, and had the comfort of our presence here while hewas dying. Sometimes I wonder why I married into such astrange family when I had other choices. And why did younot let me know, Daniel? I take it unkindly in you to comerushing down here without a word to me.”
“Mama,” he said soothingly, “you and Camilla were in Bath and I was in London. Besides, Aunt Millie urged secrecy.”
Aunt Sarah made a sound indicating her contempt of her sister-in-law’s urgings. She was, Julia had always found, anabrupt, forceful, rather unsympathetic person.
Camilla smiled and kissed her brother and hugged Julia, murmuring words of sympathy in her ear. Camilla was stillnursing a broken heart over the death in battle of her officerfiancétwo years before. She was twenty-four years old.
Aunt Eunice and Uncle Raymond, Lord and Lady Bellamy, arrived the day before the funeral as did Uncle Henry and Aunt Roberta, Lord and Lady Hemming, brother andsister-in-law of the late countess, with their son and daughter, Malcolm and Stella Stacey. Julia hugged Stella, twoyears her junior and always her playmate during their girlhood. Malcolm bowed over her hand but did not smile.Malcolm had never been a smiler. But then everyone knewthat he was painfully shy.
Aunt Eunice spent the rest of the day in tears, exclaiming at the cruelty of a brother who had not sent for his own sister during his dying days. Uncle Henry set an arm aboutJulia’s shoulders and sympathized with her on her loss. Shemust come back to live with him and Aunt Roberta, hesaid. His kindness succeeded only in dissolving Julia intears. Again.
Poor Grandpapa. She shed many tears over him, most of them in private, during those days leading up to his funeraland during the few days following while they all waited forthe remaining members of the family to arrive for the reading of the will. She missed him. She felt orphaned anew despite the fact that she was one and twenty years of age.Suddenly she felt as if she had no one left of her very own.
It was a bleak and rather a frightening feeling. And an unnecessary one, she supposed. Not only Uncle Henry, butalso Aunt Eunice and Uncle Raymond had offered her ahome. But of course they offered out of a kindness shecould not accept. She could not become a charity case topeople who had no real obligation to her at all. Especiallywhen she was twenty-one years old. Grandpapa had understood that. That was why he had urged marriage on her sopersistently.
It was equally bleak knowing that another man now held Grandpapa’s title and gave the orders that Grandpapa hadalways given and commanded the type of respect and deference that had always been Grandpapa’s. Daniel. Julia resented him. Unreasonably so, perhaps since he certainly didtake charge of affairs that would have been difficult for herand Aunt Millie to handle alone. Daniel was extremely efficient.
Julia resented him nonetheless. But then she had always resented Daniel. Or almost always. He had always been oldenough to despise her. When she was a child, he had been aboy and not at all interested in playing games of house orschool or chasing. When she became a girl, he had been ayoung man and already, from the age of fourteen, a viscount. He had not been interested in his girl cousins andtheir squeals and giggles or in the sort of wild games theboys and girls played together. He had grown up fast. Toofast.
